Being Fundamentally Misguided

Somewhere in the crowd on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, or perhaps in a part of Iraq that is welcoming back plane-loads of European tourists, I am hoping some brave young entrepreneur was already designing the first great Islamic ale. The world’s first beers hailed from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, and the time for revival must come soon.

I know about a dozen Muslims, mainly professional people, who manage to combine five-times-daily prayers with drinking the odd beer or two. Their private misgivings about alcohol abstinence range from concerns that the teachings of the Quran have been misinterpreted, to a simple desire to share. They abhor the boorish behaviors of drunkenness, but regret that, due to the dominant view both of and within their religion disapproving of even moderate drinking, nobody dares to create a beer that is, well, Eastern.

When a typically outgoing Muslim colleague asked me timidly to suggest a beer for him to try, I offered an aromatic light wheat beer, or one of those cola-sweet Stouts from West Flanders, though my most serious convert insisted on taking a single nip of strong, dry Imperial Stout, which he then nursed all evening.

The nervousness comes not from social awkwardness, but rather from what other equally sane Muslim colleagues might say or do if they found out about our little conspiracy. The fractured Islam community argues fiercely within itself over words and concepts—like all enthusiasts.

Consider the sentence: “The best beers are re-fermented in their containers.” Some believe beer stored without yeast is the devil’s work, while the issue of whether you would put the words “All of” or “Most of” at the beginning of that sentence can define you to others as a believer or an infidel. Why?

The craft beer movement owes much to the UK beer drinkers’ organization the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), whose “pioneers” from the 1970s will meet privately this month to celebrate its 40th birthday (and our personal survival). CAMRA broke the absurdity barrier, allowing beer enthusiasts elsewhere to feel more confident when they complained about the parlous state of their own country’s beers in the wake of Prohibition, World War II and grandiose business theories.

Back then, only four nations—Britain, Belgium, Germany and Czechoslovakia—could credibly claim to posses a living culture of craft brewing. Nowadays, that number is nearer to 40, with many producing more and better classic British ales than are currently made in the UK.

At times of rapid change, people crave rules. These rules often come from moral or religious texts written centuries ago, when the pitfalls of life and use of language were incomparably different from today. For many British beer drinkers, it is a definition of good beer devised in innocence a few decades ago, when we worshipped yeast.

Throughout the 20th century, UK brewers, like Americans, focused on making relatively flimsy draft beers that went from grain to glass in less than a month. In contrast to continental Europe’s traditions of “slow beer,” which was fit for consumption as soon as it passed the brewery gate, ours was improved in the cellar by the yeast in its cask—hence, our beliefs. The more prescriptive the tenets of any faith, the less useful they are in helping its followers adapt to new inventions.

Good beer in Britain is no longer solely the territory of flat-capped dog walkers; it has become more fashionable. In its next phase, CAMRA will need to decide whether it will lead the appreciation of all good beer in the UK or merely comment from the sidelines, so as not to offend its purist members.

The trouble with fundamental principles is that, invariably, some of them are fundamentally wrong. ■